Edmunds, Friends Thankfully Break Rock-revue Mold

March 26, 1990|By Greg Kot, Rock music critic.

Nostalgia is the pop-music equivalent of a lobotomy. It begs us not to think too deeply, so as to better appreciate the fading charms of ``remember when?`` acts like the Who, Jefferson Airplane and Paul McCartney. We bought willingly into their ``comebacks`` last year because of what they represent

(the music of our youth) rather than for what they are, which is washed up.

All the more reason to regard with skepticism something called ``Dave Edmunds` Rock `n` Roll Revue,`` which rolled into town Saturday night at the Riviera. With Welsh rocker Edmunds serving as musical master of ceremonies, the show starred Graham Parker, the Fabulous Thunderbirds` Kim Wilson and Dion in sort of a throwback to the all-star soul and rock revues that used to barnstorm the country in the days before rock `n` roll became Rock Inc.

But instead of memories, Edmunds and Company offered something far more substantive and immediate: passion. For better than 2 1/2 hours, the four stars took turns leading a terrific nine-piece band, which featured Memphis guitar legend Steve Cropper and the Miami Horns, through a series of soul-drenched tunes.

Edmunds opened the show with a couple of numbers from his new album,

``Closer to the Flame`` (Capitol). More accurately, it should be entitled

``Keeper of the Flame,`` for ever since Edmunds hit it big with a version of Smiley Lewis` ``I Hear You Knocking`` in 1971, he`s been carrying the torch for R & B-based American music of the `50s and `60s.

Fittingly, he was followed by Wilson, whose Texas blues band scored a hit with the Edmunds-produced ``Tuff Enuff`` in 1986. If Edmunds lit the flame Saturday night, Wilson turned it into a roaring fire with his burly, jovial presence, Big Joe Turner-style vocals and joyful harp blowing.

Parker was next, a refugee of the British pub-rock scene of the mid-`70s. Parker`s voice cuts through the night like a switchblade, and his tough, lean music-especially ``Get Started, Start a Fire`` and ``Under the Mask of Happiness``-was perfectly complemented by Cropper`s biting, no-frills guitar. Cropper packs more resonance into an eight-bar solo than showoffs like Joe Satriani manage in an entire career.

Dion, a rocker who earned his ``street`` stripes even before there was such a term by singing about tenements, street corners and long-legged femme fatales in the early `60s, looked ill-at-ease as he plunged into several songs from his Edmunds-produced comeback album, ``Yo Frankie`` (Arista). But he melted all hearts in the audience with a stirring ``Abraham, Martin and John.`` Parker and Edmunds each sang a verse, and as the three huddled around the microphone for the final chorus, the grit and majesty of their voices made this naive folk song sound beautiful and relevant.

It was a tough act to follow, but the raving, howling audience demanded more, and they got it. When Cropper took his first lead vocal of the night,

``(Sittin` on) The Dock of the Bay,`` a song he wrote with Otis Redding, the house quaked. To witness Cropper plucking those melancholy notes on his guitar while he sang was to experience another form of nostalgia; the kind that reminds us of why rock and soul still matter in our lives.